Employment Lessons

Well, it’s already December (where did the year go?) and we’re all thinking about the most wonderful time of year – cutting out early and going to office parties! Parties are a great way to reward staff, celebrate accomplishments, foster teamwork, and create the foundation for another great year. What could possibly go wrong? The annual holiday party is rife with traps for the unwary: What’s in a Name? For starters, what do you call the event? How about a “Christmas…

Comparing the legendary basketball coach Dean Smith’s “control the clock and control the game” strategy, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Barrett v. Walker Cty. Sch. Dist., 872 F.3d 1209 (11th Cir. 2017) struck down a Georgia school district’s policy that restricted public comment at school board meetings. The court’s decision in Barrett, arose from failed efforts of the school’s union president to secure a speaking slot during an upcoming board meeting. Although not mandated by Georgia law, the…

Skip the holiday turkey or the $25 gift certificate. This year, give a gift to your employees that will have a lasting impact on how they treat each other. Give everyone a book of etiquette. I’m serious. Make them read it, too. Reviving the lost rules of proper conduct could go a long way in reducing workplace misconduct of all kinds—including sexual harassment (the list is growing every day), other harassment and discrimination, bullying, rudeness, and personality conflicts. Recently, good behavior and…

Are workplaces at risk for a backlash? How do we preserve and continue to advance opportunities for women when their male coworkers are worried? Worried about exactly where the line is between friendliness and sexual harassment at work? A recent New York Times article raised this question with men at work, who wondered about their own behavior, and also raise concern for their female coworkers. In general, although women at work acknowledge the recent conversation about sexual harassment is overdue, they now worry…

As we have covered in a prior post, the electronic recordkeeping deadline was moved from July 1, 2017, to Dec. 1, 2017, after the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) filed a notice of proposed rulemaking. After the two-week debacle in August, where OSHA was forced to take down its own electronic portal for submission of OSHA records due to a potential compromise of user information, the final rule postponed the deadline for two more weeks until Dec. 15, 2017. OSHA states that this…